ANSYS CFD Professional for CAD Pros

Anyone who has been around the design-analysis-manufacture cycle for any length of time knows that ANSYS has a comprehensive suite of engineering software from FEA (finite element analysis) to CFD (computational fluid dynamics) and from post-processing to workflow and simulation process and data management. In the CFD milieu alone, ANSYS offers something like 11 products. Among these are the widely used ANSYS Fluent and ANSYS CFX systems as well as specialized analysis products like ANSYS Icepak for electronics thermal management, ANSYS BladeModeler for turbomachinery analyses and ANSYS Polyflow for polymer, glass, metals and cement processing.

Courtesy of ANSYS Inc. and CAMERON – Tom Wheatley.

All of these toolsets tend to get significant press because certain editors, such as moi, get fascinated with the amazing images of the leading-edge projects where these products are used. But you know there’s another ANSYS CFD application that’s widely deployed in the world of design engineering that gets less press. I’m not sure why, really. Maybe it’s because ANSYS CFD Professional is an everyday, blue-collar sort of tool. Today’s Check it Out link takes you to more on this sturdy and flexible application. And, yes, there are cool images.

A little background: ANSYS CFD Professional is intended for engineers who need to analyze designs involving flow and low-temperature heat transfer only. So, if radiation is something you need to analyze and predict, this solution is not what you need from ANSYS.

Still, ANSYS CFD Professional should be right up your alley if you are designing things like valves, analyzing thermal stratification in pipes or working on jobs where you need to maximize safety, improve air flow or predict flow and thermal behaviors. ANSYS describes ANSYS CFD Professional as the “right flow simulation solution for CAD professionals.”

Now, whether you’re a design engineer familiar with ANSYS CFD Professional or just learning about it, what will grab you about this tool is the broad range of applications where it is used. That diversity of implementations, in a nutshell, is what the landing page at the other end of today’s link is all about.

On this page, you’ll find eight titles in gray bars stacked accordion fashion. Click the plus sign. What you get is a brief, real-world vignette on how somebody used ANSYS CFD Professional. Let me stress that these are not academic “CFD is your friend” examples. These are quick, to-the-point, real-world samples showing how CFD provided real engineering value. Almost all of them have an associated company name (many well known), and all have an illustration. Each piece follows the same format: Application, Goal and How Simulation Helps.

The image up there in the HTML version of this message comes from a longer version of the “Minimizing Pressure Drop” piece. The goal of this project was to define a check valve system that minimizes pressure drop. Here’s what the How Simulation Helps line reports: “The fluid dynamics results showed turbulence inside the valve body, indicating areas that could be modified to reduce pressure loss.”

That’s it, and that is the beauty of this landing page. It wastes no time showing you exactly what ANSYS CFD Professional can do for you. Other vignette topics include airflow split, clean room ventilation/exhaust, cold/hot water mixing, exhaust manifold temperature prediction, heat exchange, recirculation on helidecks and thermal stratification.

The landing page also offers a wealth of CFD-related resources, including brochures, case studies, on-demand webinars, technical briefs, videos, white papers and even video testimonials. Download the “ANSYS 15.0 Capabilities” brochure to have a matrix of all the ANSYS solutions. And after all that if you’re still not sure if ANSYS CFD Professional is right for your applications, you’ll find a link where you can contact an ANSYS CFD expert who’ll help you sort it all out. Hit today’s link and begin exploring this page for yourself.